Stay Ahead of Issues: A Guide to Implementing Real-Time Log Monitoring and Alerting

With the log management market expected to grow from $1.9 billion in 2020 to a staggering $4.18 billion by 2026 globally, log monitoring and alerting have become important concepts for organizations looking to adopt more cloud-native technologies and microservice architectures.

However, the flexibility of these environments also makes them complex, leading to an exponential increase in the variety, volume, and velocity of logs.

To identify what’s happening in these complex environments and utilize their operational and business value fully, teams require a smarter way to monitor and analyze logs.

This post will explore more about real-time log monitoring and alerting, including what they are, how to set up log monitoring/alerting, and why they’re critical for healthy cloud architectures.

What is Real-time Log Monitoring and Its Benefits?

Real-time log monitoring gathers, analyzes, and acts on log data from multiple sources, including applications, infrastructure, and devices within a DevOps environment.

Real-time log monitoring is critical. It helps IT teams proactively find and solve problems related to application performance so that business-critical activities are smooth.

Besides, log monitoring encourages higher security with real-time detection of almost all security incidents, such as malware infections and unauthorized accesses, and investigation for malicious activity.

There are multiple other advantages of log monitoring, as listed below:

• Optimized system performance
• Faster Incident response and resolution
• More IT automation
• Increased team collaboration
• Minimized downtime

What is Log Alerting?

Log alerting is a major component of log monitoring. It is crucial in ensuring the timely detection and response to critical events, various anomalies, or issues identified through log analysis.

Some of the key features of an effective real-time alerting system include customizable alert rules, multi-channel notifications, and escalation policies.

There are various types of alerts, as discussed below:

1. Event-Based Alerts

An event-based alert tells you that a specific event has occurred in your logs. This is particularly useful when there is an error in your logs.

2. Rate-Based Alerts

A rate-based alert allows you to generate an alert based on the rate of change of a value, as opposed to the value itself.

3. Value-Based Alerts

Value-based alerts generate log values that can use either the count of logs matching a specific filter or fields contained within the logs.

How to Set Up Log Monitoring- Step-wise Procedure

Below is a stepwise process of setting up of log monitoring-

1. Identify and Understand Various Log Sources

The first step is identifying all log sources from servers (access logs, Syslog), applications, network devices (routers, firewalls), or IoT devices. Knowing where your data comes from allows you to gather it into a centralized system for a more transparent monitoring approach.

2. Clearly Define the Objectives of Log Monitoring

The next step in the process is to define your objectives for the log monitoring clearly. Among the main things that you have to focus on here include proactively detecting and resolving application errors and ensuring proper compliance with secure practices for protecting infrastructure.

3. Pick the right Log Monitoring Tools

Choosing the appropriate tools is another crucial requirement for log management. When making a selection, it is best to pick tools that support compatibility for easy integration with different log sources and tools with user-friendly interfaces.

4. Set Up Log Aggregation and Centralization

Centralizing logs is quite critical for streamlined operations, especially with distributed systems and cloud infrastructures. A powerful log monitoring system can be instrumental here to help you collect logs from multiple sources and centralize all the data for a more comprehensive analysis.

5. Setup Log Processing and Storage

Since raw logs are not consistent and easy to analyze, it is best to configure or set up automated rules to standardize the logs. This ensures higher consistency in data, to gain deeper insights and actionable information.

6. Detailed Log Analysis and Monitoring

Conducting a detailed log analysis and monitoring allows you to set up a single, comprehensive dashboard where you can view all key metrics like error rates, system performance, and other security anomalies.

7. Test, Validate, and Review Your Setup

Last but not least, make sure to test your log monitoring setup thoroughly, followed by validating and reviewing it to help ensure that logs are appropriately captured and alerts are triggered as per the expectation.

How to Set up Log Alerting: Step-Wise Procedure

In this section, we will cover the process of setting a real-time alerting system in detail:

1. Collect Data

Start the process by collecting data from the alerting dashboard that has a snapshot of all your current alert groups and rules.

2. Centralize Data

Collect log data from multiple sources in one place for thorough examination and usage.

3. Configure Alert Rules

Create a log alert and configure alert rules on a summary of log data using DQL (Dynatrace Query Language). DQL here allows you to create complex queries and apply multiple filters and sorting conditions.

4. Manage Notifications

Here you need to learn how to create and manage alert-based notifications and notifications for the completion of scheduled actions for your account.

5. Add Context to Log Messages

At this stage, you need to add context to log messages for alerting by using variables and reference tables and making context parameters of the exception.

6. Add Tags or Unique Identifiers

In the last stage, configure alert rule tags or unique identifiers to your alert rule by selecting the Tags tab and setting up any required tags on the alert rule resource.

Best Practices for Real-time Log Monitoring

Here are a few best practices that you need to take into consideration to optimize the efficacy of real-time log monitoring:

1. Prioritize Log Relevance

Understanding the need for a good log monitoring solution will help you determine and prioritize log relevance, which will help you better define your logging requirements. Some of the reasons an organization might want such a solution include compliance requirements, local laws and regulations, or incident response requirements.

2. Standardized Log Format

Make sure that there are company-wide standardized log formats and procedures that outline detailed logging requirements for various systems. This ensures higher consistency and that protocols are followed in logging.

3. Implement Real-Time Monitoring and Incident Management Response

Establishing real monitoring, alerting, and incident response is one of the best practices in log management, as it helps organizations and IT teams to identify and respond to issues and potential threats quickly.

4. Setting Alerts

Configure your log management systems or monitor the stream of ingested logs and set alerts for critical events or known errors that could signal a security incident or application performance issue.

How to Pick a Log Monitoring Tool?

Selecting the best log monitoring tool requires you to consider several factors. Some of these are the capability to monitor logs, a centralized display of information, customizable alerts, native and automated reports, and a free trial period.

Several log monitoring tools are available on the market today e.g. Middleware. Going for platforms that allow full transparency and detailed analysis of your entire tech stack is crucial.

Conclusion

A real-time alerting system is crucial for avoiding potential issues. By proactively tracking logs and setting up timely alerts, organizations can detect anomalies, diagnose problems faster, and prevent system downtime.

Log monitoring and alerting are important aspects for determining your system's current performance and enhancing its overall effectiveness.

A good log monitoring and alerting software allows you to monitor and optimize all your log events accurately. Harnessing the power of a log monitoring platform, you can simplify log monitoring and analyze logs from infrastructure and other systems in a centralized location.